Word: dunckel
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...French duo have returned with “Pocket Symphony” and a fresh supply of their patented haute-electronica. Their sound combines rigorous piano, string, and synth melodies with a variety of eclectic instrumentals, plus vocals by both group members, Nicholas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel. In “Pocket Sympony,” Air continues to exploit their original sound and attempts to forge a perfect balance between synths and live instrumentation. However, many of the songs seem to shy away from the pulsing intensity of “Talkie Walkie” tracks...
Between songs, Jean-Benoît Dunckel, in halting English, informed the crowd, “I like to think about what I am going to do in bed, especially whether it is going to be with a man or with a woman. Everything we do is related to the world...
...most apparent balance was between synthetic and organic. On one end of the stage stood Nicolas Godin, alone with his acoustic guitar. On the other stood Dunckel, ensconced in a veritable cocoon of keyboards and synthesizers...
...course nobody, not even Air, plays with this technological contrast without inviting comparison to Radiohead. On a gorgeously schizophrenic rendition of “People in the City,” Dunckel and Godin got in touch with their inner paranoid android, swinging wildly between rock stomp and tropical synth. But I suspect that their android is just suffering from a mild case of ennui, because Air is having way too much sex to endorse Radiohead’s apocalyptic prolepsis...
...Modestly, Dunckel and Godin attribute their success to the decline of Anglo-Saxon pop into sterile nostalgia and carbon-copy teen acts. Like true Frenchmen, they cultivate a certain rebelliousness in the face of music business orthodoxy. "The entire industry has stopped taking risks," Dunckel complains. "The record companies are just delivering product to radio stations. But the current French scene is coming from home studios and that's what keeps it free and fresh. The big business music generated by record companies has been swept aside...